Introduction: Home at Last: Poverty Law Returns to the Academy

Abstract

The process of birthing new fields of study in American legal education is curiously unexpected and unpredictable. Some law school subject matters grow almost naturally from expanding fields of practice, like leafy new shoots from aging trees. Other courses come with breathless haste of the latest American social fad and quickly fade into nostalgic memory. Poverty law has been characterized by many lawyers in the academy and in practice as a remnant of the ‘60s when lawyers were identified with social causes such as racial justice, anti-war protests, and due process for all. The article discusses current poverty law scholarship and the assumptions and themes of the new scholarship.

Keywords: Poverty law, American legal education, Goldberg v. Kelly, Shapiro v. Thompson, legal scholarship